Keratea revolt - The end of a "regime" starts with will and spirit

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The end of regime starts with a spark which ignites the fire and all follow. In Tunisia the spark was the maltreatment and humiliation of a jobless university graduate who went into the street to be a vendor only to have his goods confiscated, Other historical revolts include the uprising by Chinese students during the Tiananmen Square crises in Beijing (1989), the Warsaw Jewish uprising (1943), the Hungarian Uprising (1956), the Easter Rebellion in Ireland (1916), the Boston Tea Party (1773), the 1821 Revolution in Greece and today it's the Keratea revolt…

Keratea is a town of 16,000 residents in Lavreotiki municipality, situated in south-eastern Attica, 40km from Athens, near Lavrion.  

For over three months now, the residents of this small town have been locked in a violent standoff with the police over the planned construction of a huge landfill that aims to solve Athens’ garbage problem.

The scenes broadcast on Greek television and on amateur videos on the Internet are pretty graphic and undisputable: middle-aged protesters hurling firebombs at the police, overturned cars in flames, priests in black robes wailing amid clouds of tear gas and youngsters throwing rocks at Greek police. 

Throughout the past 110 plus days many residents and law officials have been hurt in the process and though there have been dozens of arrests, the locals vow not to back down. The residents claim that the creation of a huge open dump would be the top of the iceberg to a complete subjugation of the area and its people to private profit/ they characterize this as dangerous and a typically illegal solution to the garbage disposal problems of the Attica province.

The scenes broadcast on Greek television and on amateur videos on the Internet have been stark: middle-aged protesters hurling firebombs at the police, overturned cars in flames, and Orthodox priests in black robes wailing amid clouds of tear gas.

Many residents and police officers have been hurt in the fighting. And though there have been dozens of arrests, the locals vow not to back down.

The Keratea campaign has been compared by some commentators to milder forms of civil disobedience appearing in a debt-stricken Greece, including a small movement of citizens who refuse to pay higher road toll charges and more for tickets for public transportation. But fare-evasion is quite different than waging an armed standoff with the police. This is about trash, and trash has been fuelling violent protests for years. The fact that this dispute coincides with the economic crisis makes it all the more explosive.

The dispute originated last year when Greece faced millions of Euros in fines after missing a July 2010 deadline for razing hundreds of illegal landfills around the country. In January, the European Union froze these fines on the condition that the government carried out a waste-management program that increased recycling and replaced the illegal dumps with sanitary landfills that met EU health and safety standards. But no town in Greece wants a landfill in its backyard, as is clear from the reaction in other communities over the years. In 2009, residents of Grammatiko, a town east of Athens, scuffled with the police for weeks over a landfill that is now under construction as locals fight the project in court. In 2008, a 43-year-old woman died when riots broke out on Corfu over the planned construction of a landfill there; the project has been held up as locals mount court challenges. In the northern port of Thessaloniki, residents have opposed landfill projects for years.

In Keratea, however, protest has given way to violence involving a large section of the town, including the middle-aged and the elderly. The reactions of normal everyday people (bakers, construction workers, blue collar workers, housewives, teachers, etc.) appear to have taken the government by surprise and have provoked a political rift. The Citizen Protection Ministry says the heavy police presence in Keratea is a drain on resources, while the Interior Ministry insists that the authorities cannot back down.

On most days, these residents hide in wooden huts set up alongside the road leading to the proposed site. They guard a plastic barricade on the road, so construction workers cannot enter the site. About a kilometre away hundreds of police officers guard three excavators that have been vandalized since their transfer there last December.

On most nights, they clash with police officers on the road and in the fields around the site. Many hut regulars seem unlikely resistance fighters but defend locals wielding firebombs.

Concerned about Keratea’s defiance, the government has appealed for discussions, or so it says, but the locals will not talk until the police withdraw their forces and the government will not talk until the residents’ dismantle their barricade. The government has appealed a decision by a local court suspending work on the proposed landfill until environmental and archaeological assessments are carried out; residents have appealed a ruling by a higher court allowing construction to proceed. A no win situation for both sides.

When officers entered the town this past February and searched houses, huge clashes erupted. Locals said a plainclothes officer threatened protesters with a gun. They termed it as the final straw.

The police say they are regularly pelted with firebombs and have been shot at by a sniper. They want to withdraw, and claim that Keratea doesn’t need policing it rather needs a political solution. The townspeople claim the same...  Certainly the impasse will be definitely be difficult to break. The landfill is perceived not only as an environmental scourge but also as a threat to subsistence at a time of rising unemployment.

Over the last decade, after the construction of the international airport at Spata (2001), and also Lavrion and Rafina ports development to unburden Piraeus’ heavy traffic, eastern Attica suffered a sort of gentrification with Athens recreational, touristic and construction firms moving eastern (this movement can be tracked by almost annual forest fires, taking care of what’s left of Attica’s unexploited space). Of course, infrastructure and any kind of social services (even proper sewage systems) remain significantly inadequate. 

The struggle yesterday reached its most crucial point so far. In the morning police began to break through barricades in order to allow construction machinery to reach the site of the planned landfill. On their part, the town activated the war sirens, calling all residents to rush to save the barricades. Meanwhile, on the national road, an excavating machine that arrived in an attempt to clear up the barricades was then set ablaze by locals. According to unconfirmed reports, a police helicopter flying over the town released tear gas to the residents below and clashes across the national road, with Molotov bombs continued. Residents of the nearby town of Lavrio have been rushing to the barricades too, as war sirens and church bells are ringing across their town, too. Police retaliated by firing tear gas to disperse the angry crowd, while six riot police buses were sent to the site to fortify an already strong police presence. Four officers were reportedly injured in the clashes though it remained unclear how many protesters had been hurt.

Violence and revolts are not the answer and dangerous, but that doesn't mean all of their followers are. Many have legitimate grievances, but the anger and resentment of the people of Keratea is usually misdirected by the media and other front groups. This has galvanized the people against police brutality and transformed the protest into a revolt against the Government. The situation has also placed the police in a dilemma of either turning its guns against the people or the Government. 

The people of Keratea have so far written and continue to write their own story in our history books, using their own lives as revolutionary flags and this is something no one can overlook, no matter how many interests are fostered in the case. They have shown spirit, whether they are right or wrong, and it has attracted the solidarity of social groups, of conscious people in struggle, and even the respect of their enemies. I commend them for not bowing to persecution, for speaking their minds, but like I said, I do not agree with the violence… there must be some other way. No one knows what will follow, maybe an attack by society against the enemies of Keratea, the mega-contractors, the politicians, the cops (in order of authority). 

Maybe Greek society was waiting for a reason to follow a revolt and I suspect that the end of the government’s rule will begin here… for the residents here are determined to do away with what they term “the regime” that is ruling our country. Indeed… when you do not listen to the people but to your own interests (and corporate) and when you forcefully try to apply legislature whether right or wrong… then you generally get burned.